The Most Influential People Across History
Find the most influential people in 24 academic disciplines and numerous subdisciplines
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List of the most influential people in Physics,
#11451
Abraham Zacuto
1450 - 1521 (71 years)
Abraham Zacuto was a Castilian astronomer, astrologer, mathematician, rabbi and historian who served as Royal Astronomer to King John II of Portugal. His astrolabe of copper, his astronomical tables and maritime charts played an important role in the Spanish and Portuguese navigation capability. They were used by Vasco Da Gama and Christopher Columbus.
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William Wallace
1768 - 1843 (75 years)
William Wallace LLD was a Scottish mathematician and astronomer who invented the eidograph . Life Wallace was born at Dysart in Fife, the son of Alexander Wallace, a leather manufacturer, and his wife, Janet Simson. He received his school education in Dysart and Kirkcaldy.
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Alexandre Guy Pingré
1711 - 1796 (85 years)
Dom Alexandre Guy Pingré was a French canon regular, astronomer and naval geographer. Early life Pingré was born in Paris but was educated by the canons regular of the Abbey of St. Vincent in Senlis, Oise, where he entered the community at the age of sixteen. In 1735, after his ordination as a priest, he was appointed professor of theology at the school. He soon, however, came under suspicion of subscribing to Jansenism and was summoned by the Bishop of Pamiers, by whom he was rebuked and required to submit to an interrogation by a committee of Jesuits.
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Eduard Mahler
1857 - 1945 (88 years)
Eduard Mahler was a Hungarian-Austrian astronomer, Orientalist, and natural scientist. He graduated from a Vienna public school in 1876 and then studied mathematics and physics at the University of Vienna, receiving his degree in 1880. From November 1, 1882 until the death of Theodor von Oppolzer in December, 1886, Mahler participated in Oppolzer's research. On June 1, 1885, he was an appointed an assistant in the royal Austrian Institute of Weights and Measures.
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Stefano Freguia
#11456
Franz Josef Gerstner
1756 - 1832 (76 years)
Franz Josef Gerstner was a German-Bohemian physicist, astronomer and engineer. Life Gerstner was born in Komotau in Bohemia then part of the Habsburg monarchy. . He was the son of Florian Gerstner and Maria Elisabeth, born Englert. He studied at the Jesuits gymnasium in Komotau. After that he studied mathematics and astronomy at the Faculty of Philosophy at the Charles-Ferdinand University in Prague between 1772 and 1777. In 1781 he started to study medicine at the University of Vienna, but later decided to quit his studies. Instead, he worked as an assistant at the astronomical observatory in Vienna under supervision of Maximilian Hell.
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Olof Hiorter
1696 - 1750 (54 years)
Olof Petrus Hiorter was a Swedish astronomer. After studying in the Netherlands, he was appointed lecturer at the University of Uppsala in 1732 to fill the vacant position of Anders Celsius then on his grand tour of European observatories. From 1737 onwards, he studied together with Celsius the aurora phenomenon and a number of astronomy subjects . Hiorter was the first to connect the aurora to magnetic disturbances. Pehr Wilhelm Wargentin was his pupil.
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Henry Crew
1859 - 1953 (94 years)
Henry Crew was an American physicist and astronomer. Born in Richmond, Ohio, the son of William H. Crew and Deborah Ann, he attended high school in Wilmington, Ohio then matriculated to Princeton University in 1878. He graduated with an A.B. in physics 1882 and was awarded a graduate fellowship at the university for a year, which he spent at the Princeton laboratory. In 1883 he traveled for a semester overseas to study physics in Berlin, returning in 1884 to attend graduate school at the Johns Hopkins University. Three years later he was awarded a Ph.D. in physics with a thesis on "Doppler De...
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Gunther K. Wertheim
#11460
Nicolaas Hartsoeker
1656 - 1725 (69 years)
Nicolaas Hartsoeker was a Dutch mathematician and physicist who invented the screw-barrel simple microscope . Biography He was the son of Anna van der Meij and Christiaan Hartsoeker , a Remonstrant minister in Moordrecht near Gouda. His father took the family to Alkmaar in 1661 and finally to Rotterdam in 1669. Nicolaas started to make a living as a lens maker in Rotterdam, and was instructed in optics by Antonie van Leeuwenhoek. In 1674, he and a fellow student, assisted by Van Leeuwenhoek, were the first to observe semen, a situation that would later lead to a priority dispute between Hart...
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Pierre Puiseux
1855 - 1928 (73 years)
Pierre Henri Puiseux was a French astronomer. Born in Paris, son of Victor Puiseux, he was educated at the École Normale Supérieure before starting work as an astronomer at the Paris Observatory in 1885.
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Julius Wilhelm Gintl
1804 - 1883 (79 years)
Julius Wilhelm Gintl was an Austrian physicist. Biography Gintl was born in 1804 in Prague and attended university in his hometown. He was chair of physics at Vienna University and later at Gratz. In 1847, the Austrian government commissioned him to manage the introduction of the electrical telegraph.
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Mahesh Chandra Nyayratna Bhattacharyya
1836 - 1906 (70 years)
Mahamahopadhyay Pandit Mahesh Chandra Nyayratna Bhattacharyya was an Indian scholar of Sanskrit, and the principal of the Sanskrit College between 1876 and 1895. A friend and colleague of Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar, he played an important role in the Bengal Renaissance. He was one of the most eminent Bengalis in Kolkata of the nineteenth century.
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Friedrich Kottler
1886 - 1965 (79 years)
Friedrich Kottler was an Austrian theoretical physicist. He was a Privatdozent before he got a professorship in 1923 at the University of Vienna. Life In 1938, after the Anschluss, he lost his professorship due to his Jewish ancestry. With the help of Albert Einstein and Wolfgang Pauli, he immigrated to America from his hometown of Vienna, Austria, settling in Rochester, New York, where he worked at the Eastman Kodak Research Laboratory. He died in Rochester, New York in 1965. Besides optics, Kottler's professional pursuits focused on the theory of relativity.
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Johann Samuel Traugott Gehler
1751 - 1795 (44 years)
Johann Samuel Traugott Gehler was a German lawyer and physicist. He studied mathematics, natural sciences and law at the University of Leipzig, obtaining his habilitation for mathematics in 1776 and his law degree the following year. While a student, his influences included physicist Johann Heinrich Winckler. In 1783 he became a city councilman in Leipzig, and from 1786 served as an associate at the Oberhofgericht Leipzig. He is best remembered as the author of a popular dictionary of physical sciences, Physikalisches Wörterbuch, published from 1787 in six volumes. Decades later, the diction...
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Katherine Clerk Maxwell
1824 - 1886 (62 years)
Katherine Mary Clerk Maxwell was a Scottish physical scientist best known for her observations which supported and contributed to the discoveries of her husband, James Clerk Maxwell. Most notable of these are her involvement with his colour vision and viscosity of gases experiments. She was born Katherine Dewar in 1824 in Glasgow and married Clerk Maxwell in 1858.
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Alexander McAulay
1863 - 1931 (68 years)
Alexander McAulay was the first professor of mathematics and physics at the University of Tasmania, Hobart, Tasmania. He was also a proponent of dual quaternions, which he termed "octonions" or "Clifford biquaternions".
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Abu Ja'far al-Khazin
900 - 960 (60 years)
Abu Jafar Muhammad ibn Husayn Khazin , also called Al-Khazin, was an Iranian Muslim astronomer and mathematician from Khorasan. He worked on both astronomy and number theory. Al-Khazin was one of the scientists brought to the court in Ray, Iran by the ruler of the Buyid dynasty, Adhad ad-Dowleh, who ruled from 949 to 983. In 959/960, Khazin was required by the vizier of Ray, who was appointed by ad-Dowleh, to measure the obliquity of the ecliptic.
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Alexander William Roberts
1857 - 1938 (81 years)
The Hon. Alexander William Roberts FRSE FRAS FRSSA was Scottish-born, South African teacher and an amateur astronomer. He was an expert on the stars of the southern hemisphere and did much mapping of these stars. He was affectionately known as Roberts of Lovedale.
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Hans Mueller
1900 - 1965 (65 years)
Hans Mueller was a Swiss physicist and professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology . He created Mueller calculus. Mueller was born October 27, 1900, in Amriswil, canton Thurgau, Switzerland. His father was Ernst Müller and mother Mathilde Meier. Hans attended school in Frauenfeld and proceeded in 1919 to Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule. He graduated with a teacher's diploma for science and mathematics in 1923. In graduate work his advisors were Peter Debye and Paul Scherrer.
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Radó von Kövesligethy
1862 - 1934 (72 years)
Radó von Kövesligethy , was a Hungarian physicist, astronomer and geophysicist. Kövesligethy developed a spectral equation for black body radiation for the continuous spectra of celestial bodies which had the following properties: the spectral distribution of radiation depends only on the temperature, the total irradiated energy is finite, the wavelength of the intensity maximum is inversely proportional to the temperature.
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Giuseppe Biancani
1566 - 1624 (58 years)
Giuseppe Biancani, SJ was an Italian Jesuit astronomer, mathematician, and selenographer, after whom the crater Blancanus on the Moon is named. Biography Giuseppe Biancani was born in Bologna in 1566, entered the Jesuit Order in 1592, and studied at the College of Brescia with Marco Antonio De Dominis, and at the Academy of Mathematics in the Roman College with Clavius. Between 1596 and 1599 he lived in Padua, where he completed his studies and befriended Galileo, who had been appointed professor of mathematics at the local university in 1592. When the Jesuits were expelled from the Republic...
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Zygmunt Klemensiewicz
1886 - 1963 (77 years)
Zygmunt Aleksander Klemensiewicz was a Polish physicist and physical chemist. Early in his career , he made a pioneering contribution to the development of the glass electrode. Life and career Klemensiewicz was born in Kraków. His father, Robert, was a teacher of history and geography and a headmaster of a secondary school; his mother was a translator from Scandinavian languages into Polish. From 1892 the family lived in Lwów, where he finished Polish gymnasium. In the years 1904–1908, he studied chemistry, physics, and mathematics at the Lwów University, where his professors included Wac...
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Arthur Auwers
1838 - 1915 (77 years)
Georg Friedrich Julius Arthur von Auwers was a German astronomer. Auwers was born in Göttingen to Gottfried Daniel Auwers and Emma Christiane Sophie . He attended the University of Göttingen and worked at the University of Königsberg. He specialized in astrometry, making very precise measurements of stellar positions and motions. He detected the companion stars of Sirius and Procyon from their effects on the main star's motion, before telescopes were powerful enough to visually observe them. He was from 1866 Secretary to the Berlin Academy, and directed expeditions to measure the transits of ...
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Arthur Prince Chattock
1860 - 1934 (74 years)
Arthur Prince Chattock, FRS was a British physicist. Career Chattock was educated at University College School and University College London. After a short time as an electrical engineer for Siemens he returned to University College, London to study under George Carey Foster. In 1885 he succeeded Silvanus P. Thompson at University College, Bristol as demonstrator in Physics. Chattock spent two years in Liverpool with Oliver Lodge where in February 1888 he worked on key experiments towards the understanding of radio waves.
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Henry M. Foley
1917 - 1982 (65 years)
Henry Michael Foley was an American experimental physicist. He was a professor and a leading physicist at Columbia University, later serving as chairman of the physics department. In 1948, Polykarp Kusch, working with Henry Foley, discovered the anomalous magnetic dipole moment of the electron. He served on the JASON Defense Advisory Group, an independent group of scientists which advises the United States Government on matters of science and technology. He also served on the MX Missile Basing advisory panel.
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Nicolas Stoyko
1894 - 1976 (82 years)
Nicolas Stoyko or Nikolaï Mikhaïlovitch Stoyko was a Ukrainian-French astronomer, known for his research on the precise measurement of time and the rate of rotation of planet Earth. Biography Stoyko studied at the Imperial Novorossiya University before working from 1914 to 1916 as a volunteer at the Odesa Astronomical Observatory, directed at the time by Aleksandr Yakovlevich Orlov. After graduating with a degree in mathematical sciences in 1916, Stoyko served in the Russian army from 1916 to 1918. He was certified as agrégé de mathématiques in 1920. Because of the chaos caused by the Russian Civil War, Stoyko was unemployed and immigrated to Bulgaria to find work.
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Yelpidifor Kirillov
1883 - 1964 (81 years)
Yelpidifor Anempodistovich Kirillov was a Soviet physicist, doctor of physical-mathematical sciences, the founder of the Odessa scientific school in the field of photography. Biography Yelpidifor Kirillov was born in Shipka. He graduated from the Mathematics Department of Physics and Mathematics of the Novorossiysk University in 1907 with a first degree and was kept at the department of physics in preparation for an academic career. From 1908 to 1915, he worked as an assistant at the University for Women, also worked part-time observer of the magnetic-meteorological observatory, and then in ...
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Charles Chree
1860 - 1928 (68 years)
Charles Chree, FRS was a British physicist, an authority on terrestrial magnetism and atmospheric electricity, and for 32 years Superintendent of Kew Observatory. Chree was born in Lintrathen, Forfarshire, Scotland on 5 May 1860, second son to Rev Charles Chree. He was educated at the Grammar School, Old Aberdeen, the University of Aberdeen where he graduated MA in 1879 and the University of Cambridge where he graduated as Sixth Wrangler .
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Eva Ahnert-Rohlfs
1912 - 1954 (42 years)
Eva Ahnert-Rohlfs was a German astronomer. She made key observations of variable stars. Eva Ahnert-Rohlfs was born in Coburg . She studied in Würzburg, Munich and Kiel from 1931 to 1933. After nine years of withdrawal into family life, she studied from 1942 until the end of the Second World War at the University of Göttingen. From 1945, she worked closely with professor Cuno Hoffmeister as an assistant astronomer at the Sonneberg Observatory. In 1951, she received a doctorate in astrophysics from the University of Jena. At Sonneberg Observatory Eva Rohlfs met the astronomer Paul Oswald Ahnert...
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James Pound
1669 - 1724 (55 years)
James Pound was an English clergyman and astronomer. Life He was the son of John Pound, of Bishops Cannings, Wiltshire, where he was born. He matriculated at St. Mary Hall, Oxford, on 16 March 1687; graduated B.A. from Hart Hall on 27 February 1694, and M.A. from Gloucester Hall in the same year; and obtained a medical diploma, with a degree of M.B., on 21 October 1697.
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Christen Sørensen Longomontanus
1562 - 1647 (85 years)
Christen Sørensen Longomontanus was a Danish astronomer. The name Longomontanus was a Latinized form of the name of the village of Lomborg, Jutland, Denmark, where he was born. His father, a laborer called Søren, or Severin, died when Christen was eight years old. An uncle took charge of the child, and had him educated at Lemvig; but after three years sent him back to his mother, who needed his help to work the fields. She agreed that he could study during the winter months with the clergyman of the parish; this arrangement continued until 1577, when the ill-will of some of his relatives and...
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Leslie Fleetwood Bates
1897 - 1978 (81 years)
Leslie Fleetwood Bates, CBE, FRS was an English physicist known for his contributions to ferromagnetism. He was Lancashire-Spencer Professor of Physics at the University of Nottingham from 1936 until his retirement in 1964.
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Demetrios Kokkidis
1840 - 1896 (56 years)
Demetrios Kokkidis was an astronomer, mathematician, physicist, professor, and dean. Kokkidis was the fourth president of the Athens Observatory after the death of Johann Friedrich Julius Schmidt. He was one of the few Greek astronomers of the 20th century following Georgios Konstantinos Vouris and Ioannis Papadakis. He did extensive research and wrote articles about Mercury, the Sun, the Moon, and various meteorological phenomena.
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Tadeáš Hájek
1525 - 1600 (75 years)
Tadeáš Hájek z Hájku , also known as Tadeáš Hájek of Hájek, Thaddaeus Hagecius ab Hayek or Thaddeus Nemicus, was a Czech naturalist, personal physician of the Holy Roman Emperor Rudolph II and an astronomer in the Kingdom of Bohemia.
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Jan Woltjer
1891 - 1946 (55 years)
Jan Woltjer was a Dutch astronomer. Woltjer was the son of the classical scholar Jan Woltjer. On 13 December 1916 he married Hillegonda de Vries in Groningen. He worked and taught at Leiden University, where Gerard P. Kuiper was one of his students. He was the father of the astronomer Lodewijk Woltjer , who was the director general of the European Southern Observatory from 1975 to 1987.
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Anton Oberbeck
1846 - 1900 (54 years)
Anton Oberbeck was a German physicist from Berlin. He studied at Heidelberg and the University of Berlin, obtaining his doctorate from the latter in 1868. From 1870 to 1878 he was a teacher at Sophien-Realgymnasium in Berlin, during which time, he participated in the Franco-Prussian War . He lectured at Halle and Karlsruhe and conducted research at the University of Greifswald , and later at the University of Tübingen.
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Thomas Preston
1860 - 1900 (40 years)
Thomas Preston was an Irish scientist whose research was concerned with heat, magnetism, and spectroscopy. He established empirical rules for the analysis of spectral lines, which remain associated with his name. In 1897 he discovered the Anomalous Zeeman Effect, a phenomenon noted when the spectral lines of elements were studied in the presence or absence of a magnetic field. Preston reported, in an important paper published in The Scientific Transactions of The Royal Dublin Society, read on 22 December 1897, and published the following April, that he reported results more complicated than Zeeman had reported.
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William Nicol
1770 - 1851 (81 years)
William Nicol FRSE FCS was a Scottish geologist and physicist who invented the Nicol prism, the first device for obtaining plane-polarized light, in 1828. Early life Nicol was born in Humbie , the son of Walter Nicol and Marion Fowler. According to the parish register, he was born 18 April and baptised on 22 April 1770. Some sources give his date of birth as 1768; other ones give 1766.
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Arthur Matthew Weld Downing
1850 - 1917 (67 years)
Arthur Matthew Weld Downing was an Irish mathematician and astronomer. Downing's major contribution to astronomy is in the calculation of the positions and movements of astronomical bodies, as well as being a founder of the British Astronomical Association.
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Georgy Petrov
1912 - 1987 (75 years)
Georgiy Ivanovich Petrov was a Soviet engineer. In 1935 after graduating from the Moscow State University, Petrov worked at the Central Aerohydrodynamic Institute. In 1944 he worked at NII-1, a jet propulsion research institute. In 1953 he was nominated professor at the Moscow State University. In the same year he became a member of the USSR Academy of Sciences. From 1965 to 1973 Petrov directed the Russian Space Research Institute.
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Joseph L. Pawsey
1908 - 1962 (54 years)
Joseph Lade Pawsey was an Australian scientist, radiophysicist and radio astronomer. Education Pawsey was born in Ararat, Victoria to a family of farmers. At the age of 14 he was awarded a government scholarship to study at Wesley College, Melbourne, followed by a scholarship to study at the University of Melbourne. In 1929, he earned his Bachelor of Science degree from the university, followed by a Master of Science in Natural Philosophy in 1931.
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Gottfried Osann
1797 - 1866 (69 years)
Gottfried Wilhelm Osann was a German chemist and physicist. He is known for his work on the chemistry of platinum metals. He studied natural sciences and became a privatdozent in physics and chemistry at the University of Erlangen in 1819. Between 1821 and 1823, he occupied the same position at the University of Jena. He taught chemistry and medicine at the University of Dorpat from 1823 to 1828, from 1828 at the University of Würzburg.
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Hermann Theodor Simon
1870 - 1918 (48 years)
Hermann Theodor Simon was a German physicist. Biography He studied physics at the Universities of Heidelberg and Berlin, earning his doctorate in 1894 under August Kundt with a thesis on the dispersion of ultraviolet radiation. Afterwards, he served as an assistant to Eilhard Wiedemann at Erlangen, obtaining his habilitation in 1896. Two years later, he became an assistant to Eduard Riecke at the University of Göttingen, then relocated to Frankfurt am Main as director of the physics laboratory. In 1901 he returned to Göttingen as an associate professor and director of the department of applied electricity.
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Torichan Kravets
1876 - 1955 (79 years)
Torichan Pavlovich Kravets was a Russian and Soviet physicist who work on optical physics, geophysics and examined the history of physics. He was briefly exiled to Siberia on charges of being anti-Soviet from 1923 to 1926. He served as a professor at Leningrad.
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Emma Vyssotsky
1894 - 1975 (81 years)
Emma Vyssotsky was an American astronomer who was honored with the Annie J. Cannon Award in Astronomy in 1946. Biography Emma earned her bachelor's degree in mathematics at Swarthmore College in 1916 and worked at Smith College as an astronomy/mathematics demonstrator for a year before finding work at an insurance company as an actuary. In 1927, after receiving a Whitney Fellowship and a Bartol Scholarship, she enrolled in astronomy at Radcliffe College . There, she worked with Cecilia Payne on the "spectral line contours of hydrogen and ionized calcium throughout the spectral sequence."
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Lucy Wilson
1888 - 1980 (92 years)
Lucy Wilson was an American physicist, known for her research on theories of vision, optics and X-ray spectroscopy. She was also the first dean of students at Wellesley College. Biography She was born October 19, 1888, in Bloomington, Illinois, the daughter of Lucy Barron White and John James Speed Wilson Jr. Her father worked for American Telephone and Telegraph in Chicago as did his father and her younger brother. Her younger brother had begun to attend the Massachusetts Institute of Technology two years after Lucy Wilson had entered Wellesley. Wilson not only studied the sciences but also had an interest in languages, especially German, which she studied in high school.
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Joyce C. Stearns
1893 - 1948 (55 years)
Joyce Clennam Stearns was an American physicist and an administrator on the Manhattan Project. Stearns resigned from the Manhattan Project in July 1945 to become dean of faculty at Washington University in St. Louis. Joyce also served as the director of the Metallurgical Laboratory at the University of Chicago from November 1944 through July 1945.
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John Westwyk
1350 - 1400 (50 years)
John Westwyk was an English astronomer, adventurer, Benedictine monk, and author of the Equatorie of the Planetis. Biography Little is known of John Westwyk's early life. The name Westwyk is almost certainly a toponym; he presumably came from the hamlet of Gorham-Westwick, two miles west of St Albans. He was a monk of St Albans Abbey by 1380, and was most likely ordained between 1368 and 1379. Like many monks, he was probably the son of a mid-ranking peasant or yeoman.
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Jean Abraham Chrétien Oudemans
1827 - 1906 (79 years)
Jean Abraham Chrétien Oudemans was a Dutch astronomer. He was the director of the Utrecht Observatory from 1875 until 1898, when he retired. Oudemans was born in Amsterdam, son of the poet, teacher and philologist Anthonie Oudemans Sr. and Jacoba Adriana Hammecker. He entered Leiden University when he was just 16 as a student of the noted astronomer Frederik Kaiser. He became a high school teacher in Leiden when he was just 19 . The next six years he worked on his dissertation on the determination of the latitude of Leiden. Next he studied asteroids and variable stars, meanwhile hoping for an academic appointment.
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